Alex strikes me as perfectionist, always pushing for most stable releases (of Alpha!) and hot-fixing in matter of few days. Person like that wont give his product to wide public unless it's not, like, perfect
so going Steam Green Light? Nah. No way. I know he told, somewhere, he will GL it when it's more complete but without some big crisis (like lack of money) going on it just don't look he will do it before 1.0
Or, or, at least when all main features are in, like industry. Ofc this is just my humble opinion and i may be totally wrong about it.
Then there are reasons why he is building this in first place. My best guess is cos it's his dream to create something he love. There is financial aspect of it of course but that isn't main creativity drive (as we can all see from big companies when money is main drive to create something we get those AAA games that fail on many aspects, some even on launch , like Batman thingy - one that crashed on PC hard so they need to withdraw until it's patched). This is product of love => he is enjoying coding game. Imagine if you do something you like doing, like eating ice-cream. Chocolate one. Huge portion. Would you give other spoon(s) to someone else to help you eat it faster? HELL NO!
Stuff he cant do, or at least cant do on level he would be satisfy with, he give to people that know and can do. That way we (and he) get well rounded game.
Point of all this blabing of mine is that i understand him. He is doing something he love, at least (i really hope) $$ is not problem so time of developing is not that huge problem. There is no need for speeding up process. And looking it that way you got people creating something they love without time constrains and that is good thing. They can invest more of themselves in it to make it better for all of us. Only drawback is, well, more time we need to wait
Disclaimer: All of this above is just my 2 cents. I may be completely wrong. Or partially wrong. Or Alex is evil mastermind that found out what type of game is most scarce out there so nobody else making anything similar and he just enjoy looking people hooked on it suffering for lack of completeness.